I teach at Lehigh University in eastern Pennsylvania. I work on British colonialism, modernism, postcolonial/global literature, and the digital humanities.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Iriver vs. Ipod

I was a little down about my IRiver H10.

Shortly after I bought it, my wife received a free IPod Mini from work as a perk (ah, the life of the software engineer), and I was instantly jealous. Though my IRiver does have a color screen so you can look at pictures, as well as a text-viewing mode -- neither of which are to be had with IPod Mini -- it doesn't really have the "gee-whiz" quality of the IPod.

For one thing, the IPod's firmware is much, much better. It's easy to use, fast, fun to play with -- well, you already know, because chances are, you probably have an IPod. Also, ITunes is a nice piece of interface software. In contrast, the firmware my IRiver came with was awkward and buggy. Worst of all, it didn't come with it's own software package, and wasn't especially transparent to Windows Explorer. This meant I was stuck using Windows Media Player 10. (Which I don't particularly like)

Fortunately, IRiver released a major Firmware upgrade, which makes the useability of the device much better. This is the first time I can think of where a company has in effect improved a product dramatically after it's already being used by consumers who bought it.

16 comments:

I have a 30GB third-generation iPod, which I use daily for more than listening to music.

I have about 6GB of music on my iPod, but I also have an install of OS X on there as well, in case I need to boot a Mac from my iPod (which I've had to do on several occasions). I also have backups of my research notes, papers and chapters, text files of news stories and weblogs, a backup of my website (most of it anyways), contacts, calendars, and voice recordings of lectures and meetings. Not bad for $250.

The iPod might be overrated in terms of music only (who has 30GB of music?), but its vastly underrated in its ability to do the things I mentioned above, and more.

I have had an IRiver h320, one of the new 300 series. I love it. it only cost me 210$ new, has 20 GB of space, a huge nice color screen and great audio quality. I upgraded the firmware just because I wanted to watch videos on it too. QUality is great although it is a little small, not the IRivers fault really. I know some people who have Ipods and have had to send them back because of Hard Drive errors. I have convinced several people to switch over to the Iriver. My brother owns an Ipod for college but had been saving up to get a new player, his is about a year old and small. He loved his Ipod but I was able to convince him that the IRiver is cheaper, better quality, and all around a wiser buy. He just recently bought a new H10 and loves it more than he ever did with the Ipod.

I have an iriver h340 40gig. Its been good to me but its broken twice in the past 3 weeks and irver have kindly replaced it qithin two weeks. I am/was a proud supporter of Iriver, simply becasue it was better than the ipod due to its many extra featurs like radio and its ability to play videos. Now i have been forced to change my mind, with the release of the ipod video, i am now sad to say that the ipod is (in my mind) now the better of the two. My iriver is chunky and fat, only plays videos at 10fps compared to the ipod's 30fps, the iriver screen is half an inch bigger, the ipod looks better and it has better firmware. I also regret to say taht i am thinking of selling my iriver in order to buy a 30gig ipod video for $450 Australian Dollars. Unless Iriver quickly release something to compete with the superiority of the new ipod, wel... Sorry Iriver, but youve failed me!

i hav an ipod nano and it's crap.. scratches easily and it's a little too small actually.. It costs about $300 and it's only 2 gig! it has no radio, no voice recorder, all it has is a crisp coulor screen which i find boring now anyway. The screen colours are boring, the same all the time unless lookin at photos.. the iriver h10 has more un-boring colours like the background.. clearly iriver win hear. But just whjen i thought, "stuff this, i'm sellin my ipod and gettin an iriver h10". along comes the ipod video! Now i don't know what to get. I hav heard the ipod vid's dont scratch as much and the screen is real;ly good to look at. I also know it has the same colours as the nano, but it has VIDEO! iriver shawly can only offer what ive already got? but the ipod video gives me a new experience! can u please write and tell me which one to get???! and y!?

Also, does the ipod just play tv shows, pixar vid's and music video's or can it also play full length movies? like say king kong or narnia and other full length movies? if so do u hav to buy them or can u put a dvd into ur computer and copy it to ipod like u do with ur cd's? pklease write!!!

Kinda a question of opinion. Personally, I don't care about videos in general, so the Ipod video is just a waste to me. Iriver has better sound, so yah I'm going wit that. I mean, comon, what are you buying the darned mp3 player for in the first place? The music, it only goes by itself that one should take the one with the best sound.

Also, there are rumors (that I am 99% sure that they are true) of an iPod coming out that is the size (dimensions, not memory) of a video, only the entire thing is a screen!!!!!!! Click Wheel = Touch Screen, it's gonna be cool!!!

Also, does the ipod just play tv shows, pixar vid's and music video's or can it also play full length movies? like say king kong or narnia and other full length movies? if so do u hav to buy them or can u put a dvd into ur computer and copy it to ipod like u do with ur cd's? pklease write!!!

To whoever wrote that you're a moron and I just had to point that out. You can't spell or use correct grammar. But let's not overlook the question you were asking, which itself is plain stupid. Please stop using the internet, you're only creating more shit for the rest of sift through. Loser.

Links, Selected Posts

My book, Diaspora Vérité: The Films of Mira Nair, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2018, is now available on Amazon.

I have been working on several digital projects in Scalar. All are in progress as of September 2019.
One is digital archive I am calling "The Kiplings and India." Working with a team of graduate research assistants, we have been building the site in Scalar here.

I have also been working on a Digital Collection called "Claude McKay's Early Poetry (1912-1922)" This project began as a collaborative class project called "Harlem Echoes," a digital edition of Claude McKay's "Harlem Shadows." The new version of the project is much-expanded, including McKay's early Jamaican poetry as well as his uncollected political poetry from magazines like The Liberator and Workers Dreadnought.

I also put together a digital edition of Jean Toomer's Cane, taking advantage of the fact that that work is now in the public domain. That project can be found here.